A Watery Escape
by Nev827
Summary: This is how I would have preferred Castle and Beckett's escape from her squad car in "Linchpin" go down.


**I love _Castle_. Anyone who knows me very well knows this. In the past when things have happened on the show that some people have said are unrealistic, I've disagreed, arguing that it's a TV show. It's simulated reality and you have to suspend your disbelief from time to time and just enjoy it. So these events on the show that some people have argued are unrealistic, I've put out of my mind and to focus on solving the Case of the Week and/or on how it advances the Castle-Beckett relationship. **

**Unfortunately, when I saw the car scene in "Linchpin" last night, I just couldn't suspend my disbelief any longer. I love Andrew Marlowe's writing and the writing of all the writers, but I have to disagree with how he showed Castle and Beckett's escape from the car. I won't get into specifics (email me if you want and I'll explain if you ask NICELY) and I still will watch the show faithfully and root for Caskett to happen, but this will not go down as one of my favorite episodes because of this. **

**So, below is how I would have written the escape had Andrew Marlowe asked me to write it. For those of you who won't read the story because you're angry over my disagreement, I understand and please keep the hate mail civil and to a minimum. But for of those of you who agree with me or who are willing to agree to disagree, I hope you enjoy and will send a constructive review.**

* * *

><p>A silence, eerie and horrifying, fell over the interior of the car. Kate Beckett knew that silence.<p>

It was the silence that followed somebody's drowning.

Or so she'd been told by the unlucky people she'd interviewed who had witnessed such an event. She'd never seen one herself, but the silence afterward was what almost all witnesses had told her had haunted them since the tragedy. She'd always chalked it up to survivor's guilt, but now she fully grasped what they meant.

Castle.

"Castle?" She called out and searched behind her for any sign of movement, even of a bubble hitting the surface.

All she heard was silence. And all she saw was a flat level of water rising.

"Castle?" She repeated, pleadingly as panic began to overtake her.

He was gone. She'd lost him. After all they'd been through together, all the bullets they'd dodged, all the killers' eyes they'd looked into, after both surviving an almost-nuclear blast, surviving freezing to death in a refrigerator, and even surviving an encounter with a hungry tiger, their luck had finally run out.

And she hadn't told him. There was so much she hadn't told him.

No. She would live, make everything right, find justice for him and for Martha and Alexis who'd be left behind. With the water touching the bottom of the steering wheel, she shoved backwards mightily on her seat. It didn't budge, but she heard a splash come from behind her. And a sharp intake of breath.

Then Castle's head rose from under the water and poked out from in between the front seats.

"Got it." He gasped and passed her service piece to her.

Had the circumstances been different, had the water not been at her chest, she'd have kissed him full on the mouth.

"Sorry it took so long." He said.

"It's the least of our worries right now."

She stuck the gun between her body and the stubborn seatbelt, aimed it towards the windshield as best she could, and pulled the trigger.

Nothing happened.

"Oh, no." She said.

"What?"

"It's jammed." She answered, panic rising in her voice again. She tried to discharge the weapon a second time and a second time it merely clicked.

The water level was now up to both of their chins. Their eyes met and they exchanged the same look as almost a year ago when they'd stood helpless in front of a nuclear bomb and watched its timer countdown to inside of ten seconds.

"Beckett," Castle said, and titled his head sideways so he could still talk and breathe. She had reclined her head as far back as she could. "Deep breath."

They both inhaled deeply and their eyes met. In that moment, Beckett thought she'd never seen anything as beautiful as his blue eyes. And realized never in her wildest dreams did she think that the last sight she'd see on this earth would be Richard Castle's eyes.

Then the water covered them.

Desperate now, she resolved to make one last try at firing her gun. She angled it properly and pulled the trigger.

It worked. She fired three more shots and her seatbelt loosened. Castle yanked it open as Beckett fired a fifth shot into the windshield. It shattered.

Ignoring the sharp pellets of glass floating all around them, she let go of her gun. The instinct to survive was so palpable that she practically threw it away as if it were a useless piece of evidence or a child's doll. She grabbed Castle's left hand in her right and plunged through the hole. Once free, she turned back to see him wriggling through.

Confident he was not far behind her, she began rising. She kicked and pushed with her arms and hands like never before. She nearly panicked again when she couldn't make out the surface through the murk. She fought off the signals her brain was sending to her lungs to open her mouth and inhale.

How far had they sunk? In part to calm herself and in part to distract her mind, she tried to remember how deep the Hudson River was. She couldn't remember. She couldn't hold out. Her lungs were screaming for air.

Then she saw a white orb through the water, the shining and shimmering sun. She was nearly there, she told herself. She opened her mouth, unable to fight the overpowering need for oxygen, and inhaled some water, but forced it shut. She would make it.

But would Castle? He was behind her and while they both had had air before the car was completely flooded, his lungs had suffered the greater insult. He'd already been underwater more than he should have been while she had sat in the front seat breathing. Would that last gasp both had taken be enough?

An air bubble passed her and, knowing it didn't come from herself, every nerve ending in her body registered panic. As she paddled upward with her left hand, she brought her right hand down to search for him. It scrabbled around until it found fingers and locked onto them.

He was still with her. They were going to make it.

But the surface still looked miles away even though she knew it had to close and her lungs were on the verge of bursting. Was it enough? Was it all enough?

The thought flew out of her mind as her hand broke the surface, clawed at air as if it was a life preserver. But her lungs wouldn't be satisfied and she took one large gulp of water, before bursting at last into the New York air. Chilly air, but air nonetheless.

She coughed out what water she had take in and gulped air greedily, as if there was a shortage and she could only have so much. As her breathing normalized and she felt the blood circulating through her veins rather than pounding her head, she hovered, treading water and letting her mental faculties return.

Castle.

Where was he? He was right behind her. She should have heard that sharp intake of breath seconds after her own and felt him bobbing in the water next to her. Should have heard him make some snarky comment about car manufacturers or the need to issue cops scuba gear, or at least an emergency oxygen tank, in case their squad car was pushed off a pier.

"Castle?" Beckett called out. Then her mind realized that they'd been holding hands. She turned her head to the right. And her heart plunged like a stone to the bottom of the river to join her squad car.

Castle was floating motionless next to her, face down in the water, with his left hand still holding hers.

"No," she demanded. "You are not dying on me." She lifted his head out of the water. His eyes were shut, his mouth hanging slightly open and he had paled. She maneuvered him so he was floating on his back, threaded her arm under his armpits and around his chest and began paddling and kicking. She spied a narrow strip of land between the end of the pier and the water line.

As their heavy coats weighed them down and her oxygen depleted muscles screamed for rest, she once again began to doubt that they'd both live. But they had made it this far. And she reminded herself that the surface had looked miles away when it reality it was closer than her foggy brain thought. So she kept paddling and kicking, kept fighting to keep their heads above water when all she wanted to do was give up and sink. She knew his life depended on her own determination. On her will and her strength and her resolve.

Finally she felt rocks beneath her feet and pulled Castle's limp body with her to shore. She flopped on all fours on the ground, a mixture of sand and dirt and silt. She'd have kissed the whole filthy mess of it if Castle's life hadn't been hanging by a thread.

She stripped off her own heavy, wet coat and laid him out on ground on his back. Remembering the Red Cross training she took annually and Lanie's own advice, she opened his nostrils then his mouth, then angles his head to the side. Straddling him and fighting off her own violent shivering, she positioned her hands just below his ribcage and pushed towards purposefully towards his head with the heels of her wrists.

Nothing.

"C'mon, Castle. I told you not to die on me." She pleaded.

When her internal clock hit five, she pushed again.

His eyelids fluttered and she heard a gurgle.

"That's it. Come back to me, Castle." Her own words surprised her. She would have expected such a plea to come from long-separated lovers in one of the sweeping romance movies she sometimes indulged herself in when she needed a night to herself.

Well, if the shoe fits, she concluded, amused.

She pushed a third time and the gurgle was louder and was mercifully followed by the ejection of a short stream of water from his mouth. Then he coughed and rolled his head.

He was alive. They'd made it.

"Easy, Castle," she advised when he tried to lift his arms, but found the sleeves of his waterlogged coat heavy and his spent arm muscles resistant to any activity. She helped him into a sitting position as he hacked out the last of the water and began taking slow, deep breaths.

"Beckett," was all he said as he looked past her side.  
>"I'm here, Castle. We're both here. We made it."<p>

She lifted his head so she could look at those eyes and he could look into hers. Some of the color was returning to his face. She helped him slip off his coat to avoid hypothermia and shoved it away.

He reached up and placed his shivering hands on her sides, gently, around where her bra could be easily felt against her blouse that clung to her wet body. They both were shaking now, both bodies working overtime to warm themselves. So they huddled close together so their breath mingled.

"You saved me." He squeaked.  
>"We saved each other. Remember? You found my gun."<br>"Right." He said and his eyes registered that it was coming back to him. All of it. "I swear, I thought I was gonna die. I saw you in front of me, above me. And thought I won't make it. We were too deep and I couldn't wait to breath any longer. We were so far down. I opened my mouth to breath, but sucked in nothing but water. The last thing I remember was reaching up to push you."

What? He had pushed her? When she thought he was reaching for her because he wanted help, his real intention was to help her. When she thought he was trying to save himself, his real intention had been to save her.

"I thought you were reaching for my hand. For help. I thought you needed help."

"I knew you needed it more than me."

Their eyes met again, a third time she realized. And just like her third push on his chest had revived him by forcing water out of him, their locked gazes forced something to flood her system.

She told herself it was the usual euphoria that one experienced after having narrowly beaten back death, but she ignored the idea. She'd felt that euphoria before and this was more. It had a different dimension. And, her heart hoped, would have a different result.

Her reverie was broken when his head lolled against her chest, coming to rest in the space in between her breasts. She was surprised by the closeness, the intimacy, for an instant then she gave in to her own fatigue and didn't fight him off. His head turned so his cheek was pressed against her sopping shirt. Still shivering, she huddled against him for warmth. He inhaled sharply and his face twisted into what looked like a grimace.

"Castle?"

"I'm fine. Just cold. And exhausted. I can't hold myself up I'm so exhausted. I hurt all over but I can't stop shivering." He felt and sounded like a helpless, injured child who only wanted comfort.

"It's the cold water and the adrenaline backing off." She guessed.

"Yeah. One thing's for sure though, it's gonna be a while before I swim laps in the pool at my health club."

She let out a laugh as the comment caused bright warmth to spread out from her heart. She wrapped an arm around his shoulders and cradled his head against her with her other hand as she heard sirens approaching. He weakly slipped his arms around her waist.

He made it. He was back.

They'd both made it. And both would be back.


End file.
